


no trouble

by asexualrey



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Caretaking, Fluff, M/M, Sickfic, Vomiting, strep throat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 02:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9362897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asexualrey/pseuds/asexualrey
Summary: Natsume comes down with the bug that's been going around school.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for a tumblr prompt! tanunatsu sickfic just might be my favorite thing ever.

The numbers on the blackboard blur in and out of focus no matter how hard Natsume stares and blinks at them. The teacher is working through math problems and he really needs to pay attention, but the pain is making it so difficult. 

He supposes he should’ve listened to Sensei and stayed home today. When he’d woken up that morning with a sore throat, he was convinced he could tough it out—he didn’t want to make anyone worry unnecessarily, and he’s already taken so many sick days. But now he’ll admit he probably should have taken another one. His health has been declining steadily since he got out of bed, and he knows that by now he’s far too sick to be at school. He should really go to the nurse… But that would mean raising his hand and asking to be excused, and then actually walking all the way to the nurse’s office, and then having the nurse call Touko-san, and none of that sounds appealing at all. The day is almost over anyway. He’ll just wait—no need to trouble anyone. 

He blinks owlishly and tries to resist groaning aloud. His throat hurts something awful. Every time he swallows it’s like a razor being dragged down swollen, tender flesh. His head is heavy and his body aches and he’s so, so cold sitting there beside the window. He longs for the muffler Touko had wrapped around his neck that morning, and maybe a mug of hot tea. The thought of walking home in this condition through the snow and ice makes him drop his head onto his folded arms. 

He supposes he should have seen this coming. There’s been an infection going around and he’d hoped it would pass him by, but of course it hadn’t. Kitamoto was the first of their friends to come down with it, and Tanuma hadn’t been far behind. Natsume had been pretty healthy recently; it had been a while since he’d had a run-in with a spirit that impacted his health. But of course he couldn’t hope for that to last too long. 

This illness may not be caused by spirits directly, but he fully blames it on all the visitors that came to his room during the middle of the night last week. The sudden onslaught of them that had arrived practically knocking down his window was puzzling, and Sensei has told him more than once that he shouldn’t return so many names in such a short span of time, but of course Natsume couldn’t say no when there was a tiny rabbit spirit with huge, teary eyes looking up at him so imploringly. He hadn’t even been given a _choice_ when an algae spirit kept knocking on his window and refused to return later. The rest came after Natsume was wide awake and the selfless part of him just didn’t want to turn them away. He’s never been good at enforcing his boundaries. 

The exhaustion that came afterward had been incredible. He fell asleep immediately and slept through Touko calling him the next morning. He felt bad when she had to come all the way up to his room to wake him up. She was, unsurprisingly, worried by how fatigued he was, but he’d assured her he was alright and went to school regardless. 

It seems he’s paying a heavier price for it now. If he could get a decent night’s sleep, maybe his immune system would do a better job of warding off contagion.

“Natsume? Hey, Natsume.”

Natsume’s head snaps up instantly, an apology ready on his lips, but all he sees is Nishimura peering at him with a worried crease between his brows. When he looks around, the classroom is mostly empty. A few students are milling around talking, but most are already out the door.

Class is…over?

A confused, choked noise leaves his mouth and his hand automatically shoots up to his throat as if it will soothe the stinging ache there. 

“You okay, Natsume?” Nishimura says, looking genuinely concerned. 

Despite definitely not being okay, Natsume nods groggily. 

“You were fast asleep.” The boy tilts his head, a very uncharacteristic frown taking up his face. He stares wordlessly for a moment, and Natsume squirms under the scrutiny. He gets these looks too often from his friends. Before he can twist away, Nishimura reaches out and presses his palm against Natsume’s forehead. “Oh, no,” he says, more disappointment than surprise in his voice. “You’ve caught it too, haven’t you?”

Frustration boils in Natsume’s gut along with a growing nausea. He had really been hoping to slip out and get home before anyone could cause a fuss. Well, there’s no point in trying to hide it now. He looks up at Nishimura sheepishly and tries to smile. “I…I think I have.”

His hand is immediately on his throat again. His voice sounds hoarse and painful, a rough whisper that grates against his enflamed esophagus. Talking _hurt._

Nishimura winces. “You sound awful. And you’re burning up—you should really go home.”

Natsume nods and bends down to collect his bag. “Y-yeah.”

“Do you need someone to go with you? You don’t look too steady…”

“I’ll be okay.” He grins, but he’s not sure if it looks reassuring or more like a grimace. “Thanks, Nishimura.”

The other boy sighs like he’s exasperated. “At least let me walk you to the front gate.”

Natsume doesn’t have the energy to resist. Once they’re in their shoes and coats and he’s blessedly bundled up in his wool muffler, Nishimura walks outside with him, keeping a careful and obvious watch. 

Truthfully, Natsume doesn’t feel very steady. The fever’s making him dizzy and the wintry breeze makes him tremble like a leaf and his stomach is beginning to ache. He probably shouldn’t try to walk home on his own, but he’s sure he’ll manage. He’ll have to.

Beside him, Nishimura suddenly stops and waves an arm over his head. “Hey! Tanuma! C’mere for a sec!”

Natsume goes rigid. Tanuma is the _last_ person he wants to see right now. He’d already been on Natsume earlier about taking precautions against the illness going around, since he’d been one of the first to catch it. He had only been able to return to school recently—it took most people a mere few days to recover from, but Tanuma had been knocked flat on his back for a solid week. Every time Natsume tried to visit him while he was ill, he’d been turned away. Tanuma-san said his son didn’t want Natsume exposed any more than he had to be, and Natsume wasn’t surprised. They were both far too familiar with illness. 

If Tanuma finds out Natsume caught it regardless, he’ll just worry needlessly. Natsume doesn’t want him to worry. 

“Nishimura,” he rasps quietly, tugging on his friend’s sleeve. “Please don’t say anything to him. I’m begging you.”

He looks at him strangely for a beat too long, and then sighs again in the same exasperated manner. “You two are so weird.”

Natsume only gives him a tiny smile. “Please.”

It’s at that moment that Tanuma walks up to them, grinning brightly. Despite himself, Natsume’s stomach flips in his gut. Tanuma still looks a bit pale, but healthy overall, and he exudes a kind of ethereal beauty in the white of winter with snowflakes drifting lazily around him, catching in his dark hair and eyelashes. 

Natsume drops his gaze to the ground when he feels his face heat up uncomfortably. 

“Hey,” Tanuma says. “What’s up?”

Nishimura, as usual, doesn’t miss a single beat. He claps both of them on the shoulders and gives a big grin. “I just thought the two of you should walk home together, since you live out the same way.”

Natsume resists the urge to cover his face with his hand. 

Tanuma blinks. “Uh… Sure. Okay. If Natsume wants to.”

Natsume opens his mouth to protest (and hope he can make his voice sound somewhat normal), but Nishimura throws an arm around his shoulders before he can get a word out. “He’d love to! He was just telling me how he missed you while you were out sick.” Without a hint of shyness, he grabs both Tanuma and Natsume’s hands and brings them together, wrapping Tanuma’s long fingers around Natsume’s shorter ones. “Make sure he gets home safely, okay, Tanuma?” 

Tanuma, whose cheeks have lit up a burning red, merely nods. 

Nishimura runs off with a wave. The two boys are left frozen by the school gate, hand in hand, and Natsume can’t move. His heart flutters rapidly in his chest, alarm coursing through him, every sense screaming that he needs to break this contact because Tanuma probably doesn’t want it and he can’t let on that he’s ill. But Tanuma’s hand is so warm around his…

No sooner had the thought entered his head than Tanuma tenses and lets go. Natsume can’t help but feel a little disappointed when his fingers are once again exposed to the icy air. The taller boy laughs nervously and rubs the back of his neck. “Well, um… Shall we get going? I mean, you don’t have to walk with me if you don’t want to…”

Nishimura sure has put them in an awkward position. Natsume looks down again, hoping his face isn’t as flushed as it feels, whether due to fever or embarrassment. “No, it’s…” 

And just like that, his focus is once again brought back to how awful he feels. He swallows and tries not to let pain show in his face, but it’s getting worse. His throat feels like it’s swollen to the size of a pencil eraser, raw and sore and miserably enflamed. The blurriness hasn’t left the edges of his vision and his head is still pounding and the nauseous feeling is only getting stronger. He supposes he should be grateful that Nishimura hadn’t gone so far as to tell Tanuma that he’s sick, but he’s not thrilled about putting up the pretense of being healthy, either. But he can’t refuse Tanuma, so he straightens his shoulders and lifts his head high. “It’s fine. I’d…I’d like to walk with you.”

A flicker of something that looks like relief passes over Tanuma’s face. “Good. I haven’t seen you in a while. I’ve been a little worried, to be honest.”

Natsume eyes snap to him. “Why?”

“Well…” Tanuma ducks his head, rubs a finger under his nose. “I always get worried when I haven’t seen you for a while. I can’t help thinking that something might’ve happened.”

He’s talking about spirits, Natsume realizes. Not his favorite topic to discuss, but better to steer away from the fact that he’s becoming more lightheaded by the second. “Oh. Well, don’t worry. Nothing too interesting has happened lately.”

Tanuma gives him a dubious look. “Really?”

“Really!” Natsume smiles. “I promise.”

“You’d tell me if something had?”

At that, Natsume bites his lip. Tanuma knows he’s not always honest, and he’s alright with that. Or at least, Natsume thinks he is. It’s for his own protection, after all, not because Natsume just wants to keep things from him. He doesn’t like lying to Tanuma. But if it’s for his own good, he’ll gladly cover things up. And keeping him from worrying definitely falls under that category. “I would tell you if I thought you needed to know.”

There’s a flash of disappointment in Tanuma’s face, but he only nods and says nothing. 

They walk in silence for a ways. Natsume pretends to be enjoying the snowfall, but he’s really just trying to take his mind off of how sick he feels. The longer they walk, the worse it gets. His throat feels almost entirely closed up. He can barely make himself swallow, and he thanks his lucky stars that Tanuma isn’t talkative. The headache is drilling into his temples, and chills wrack his body. His stomach doesn’t feel any better either, and now he’s getting worried he actually might throw up.

Worst of all, though, is the fact that he’s feeling so dizzy. He breathes in steadily through his nose and out his mouth, but it doesn’t help. He shuts his eyes tight and begs for it to leave, but when he opens them again the brightness of the snow only seems to make it worse. His palms are sweating and his lips are numb and his vision is becoming more and more clouded with black dots. But they’re almost halfway to his house. He can make it. 

“Are you cold?” Tanuma asks suddenly. 

Natsume blinks at him, cursing his traitorous body when the image refuses to focus. “Huh?”

“You’re shivering pretty badly.” The dark haired boy frowns. “Are you alright?”

“Oh.” Talking is so painful. Natsume tries to dig up the strength again to act perfectly fine, but he’s fading. It’s harder than he thought. “I’m a little cold.”

He curses himself for admitting it when Tanuma shrugs out of his coat. “Here.” He drapes it over Natsume’s shoulders and pulls it close around his chest.

“Oh, uh…” His brain feels so foggy. He should be flustered by this development, but all he feels is a little bit warmer. He stops walking and looks down at himself. “You don’t…”

“Take it.” He smiles brightly. “I’m not that cold. It’s okay.”

Natsume just stares, vision blurring and sharpening over and over again in dizzying waves. He’s still shaking inside Tanuma’s large coat that hangs halfway down his thighs. The longer he stares, the less he can remember what he was about to say, or what he was doing. 

“Natsume?”

God, his throat hurts. He wants more than anything to lie down. He needs to go home, to crawl under his blankets on his futon and get warm and go to sleep. He takes a step forward, and then another, feeling alarmingly unsteady on his feet. 

“Natsume? Hey, are you okay?” 

Suddenly he’s doubling over and heaving the contents of his stomach onto the snow. His throat burns and he can’t breathe and it must be too much for his senses, because once he’s done vomiting the dizziness overwhelms him and he can’t hold himself up anymore. 

He falls into a pair of arms.

“Natsume! Hey! Can you hear me?! _Natsume_!”

When his senses begin to come back and his vision clears, he realizes he’s sitting on the sidewalk with snow soaking into his pants and Tanuma’s arms holding him up. “…Huh…?”

“Jeez, why didn’t you _tell_ me you weren’t feeling well?”

He can’t tell if Tanuma is talking to him or not, so he doesn’t answer. The arms around him shift a little, and Tanuma’s face appears before him. It’s marred by a worried frown and a wild note of fear in his midnight eyes. 

A warm hand covers his brow. 

“Oh, Natsume. You’re burning up.” Tanuma looks so sad as he brushes Natsume’s bangs aside. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t catch it…”

In his dazed state, the only thing Natsume can get out of his mouth is, “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t do that.” Tanuma pulls him in and hugs him tightly. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I’m gonna take you home, okay? Do you think you can stand up?”

Natsume nods against his chest, though he isn’t sure if he can or not. Tanuma takes most of his weight and they rise to their feet slowly. When Natsume’s knees buckle, he’s caught by the arms around his waist. 

“Okay, change of plan,” Tanuma says, his mouth close to Natsume’s ear. “I’m going to carry you. Is that alright?”

Natsume nods again. The pain is really the only thing he’s aware of right now. He wants to be out of the snow, out of the cold. It seems like they’ve been walking for miles. 

Somehow, Tanuma is able to heft Natsume’s limp body onto his back and wrap his arms under his thighs. Like this, Natsume can smell Tanuma’s shampoo, can feel the warmth of his skin against his cheek. It’s not exactly comfortable, being carried this way, but since he quite literally can’t support his own weight, it’s kind of nice. Maybe he should thank Nishimura for setting them up. He can feel every sway of Tanuma’s steps. He’s a good deal warmer, pressed against him. The coat is still around his shoulders, too. 

He’s half asleep by the time they reach his house. He hears Touko’s cry of alarm, but he can’t reassure her that he’s alright because his throat is on fire and he can’t event _think_ about speaking anymore without making it hurt worse. 

Tanuma carries him upstairs to his room. It’s when he’s laying him down on the futon Touko hastily spread out that he finds the energy to laugh a little and hears himself saying, “I didn’t know you were so strong, Tanuma.”

Through the fever haze, he sees the taller boy blush. “I’m not that strong. Just rest, okay?”

It’s an easy order to follow. 

Tanuma is still sitting there when Touko brings her usual equipment up to the room. It’s a little pathetic how used Natsume is to this routine. She puts the hot water bottle under his head and pulls the quilt up to his chin, and then gently places the thermometer under his tongue. He hears her cry of dismay and is instantly slammed with guilt. Touko should never be unhappy; he should never, ever make her unhappy. 

“What is it?” Tanuma says quietly. 

“39 degrees,” Touko replies. 

Tanuma makes a low, displeased noise. “He’s definitely caught it.”

“Oh, dear.” Touko smoothes a cool hand over his forehead. “I thought he was acting a bit strange this morning. I should have made him stay home.”

“I would have made him go to the nurse if I’d known.”

“He can be stubborn when he wants to be.” Touko sighs. “Thank you for looking after him, Kaname-kun. I can handle things from here, if you need to go on home.”

“I’d actually like to stay for a while, if that’s okay. I could help out.”

“Oh. Well, that would be lovely. Would you mind finishing this, then? I’ll go down and make some tea.”

“Of course, Touko-san.”

Natsume listens to Touko’s soft footsteps leaving the room, and then he hears the slosh of water. A few seconds later, a cool cloth is being placed on his brow.

“You make everyone worry more when you hide things, you know.” Tanuma’s voice is so soft that Natsume isn’t sure whether he thinks he’s already asleep. 

Somehow, he finds the strength to open his heavy eyes. “M’sorry. I didn’t mean…”

“Shh.” Tanuma drags the cloth over his forehead and down his cheek. “Don’t talk. It’s bad for your throat.”

Natsume gazes up at him. The light from above shines in a halo behind his head, illuminating the ends of his hair. It looks kind of angelic. “You…”

Tanuma gives him a warning look as he wets the cloth again. “I mean it, Natsume.”

He closes his eyes again, relishing the feeling of Tanuma caring for him like this. “You’re beautiful.”

Above him, Tanuma makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a cough. “You’re delirious.”

“M’not.” He should stop talking, really, but the words just come spilling from his lips. “I’m lucky…to have you, Tanuma…”

“Quiet.” Long fingers comb through his hair gently, slowly. “You should sleep.”

He nods weakly. This isn’t so bad, he thinks. If Tanuma will take care of him like this, he doesn’t mind being sick. 

“Just rest, Natsume. I’ll be here when you wake up.”


End file.
